Date of a FreeBSD installation

[Carl Johnson]

Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> writes:

> On Thu, 13 Jan 2011 13:50:27 -0800, Chuck Swiger <cswiger at mac.com> wrote:
>> On Jan 13, 2011, at 1:46 PM, Devin Teske wrote:
>> > This is nearly always accurate on any FreeBSD system (when wanting to
>> > query the date the machine was built):
>> > 
>> > 	ls -l /etc/defaults/rc.conf
>> 
>> I gather that you don't ever run mergemaster, which would update this file?
>> My machine installed in 2001 has a Dec 2010 date for that file:
>> 
>> -r--r--r--  1 root  wheel  36037 Dec  1 14:13 /etc/defaults/rc.conf
>
> Exactly that was my thought. Maybe a file that is NOT subject
> to one of the system upgrade procedures would be better? Maybe
> something in /boot?
>
> % ls -l /etc/defaults/rc.conf
> -r--r--r--  1 root  wheel  34300 Aug 24  2008 /etc/defaults/rc.conf
> % ls -l /boot/defaults/loader.conf
> -r--r--r--  1 root  wheel  19426 Aug 24  2008 /boot/defaults/loader.conf
>
> No, forget about that, also nonsense, looks to new...

How about /var/empty:

% ls -ldo /var/empty/
dr-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  schg 512 Jul 18 19:16 /var/empty/

It can be changed, but doesn't look likely.

-- 
Carl Johnson		carlj at peak.org